Some excerpts from “Dear Leader,” by Jang Jin-Sung

I don’t think Mr. Jang, who presented his book to me with his own hands, would mind me posting a few passages. In this one, Jang relates how, after his unlikely rise from small-town boy to court poet, he went back to his home town of Sariwon in 1994, during the Great Famine, and saw how it had transformed the town and everyone he knew.

After a meager meal of rice that his hosts has saved, grain by grain, for weeks, Jang feels guilty for his privileged life in Pyongyang, after realizing that his childhood friend is starving to death. Jang wants to ease his guilt by taking his friend to the market to buy him some shoes. Then, this happens.

When Jang can no longer stand watching his friends waste away, he makes an excuse to return to Pyongyang. His friend walks him to the station, confiding on the way that he, too, wants to go live in Pyongyang.

The experience of visiting Sariwon eventually destroys Jang’s faith in the system, and inspires him to begin keeping a secret journal of forbidden poetry about the suffering that he has seen, and can’t forget.